The Leveling (4 page)

J
OHN
D
ECKER WOKE
up in darkness again.

He was in motion. That realization, coupled with the sound of an engine and the high-pitched squeaking of rear shocks pounding up and down right underneath his head, led him to conclude he was locked inside the trunk of a car.

In front of him, he detected the muffled voices of several men.

Every time the car went over a large bump or pothole, the shocks bottomed out and sent a punch-like jolt through his body.

Assess your wounds.

He felt his fingers, then his forearms, then his shoulders. After working his way over his entire body, he concluded that he had a massive bruise on the top of his head—and probably a concussion, given the throbbing pain and the fact that he felt like puking. His arm had small puncture wounds in it from a dog bite, and he’d been shot twice in his left leg—once up in his thigh and again just behind his shinbone.

The bullet to his thigh had entered about six inches above his knee. Because of the placement of the exit and entry wounds, and the fact that he was alive and could still move his leg, he knew it hadn’t struck bone. The bullet to his shin had grazed the bone but hadn’t shattered it. He didn’t remember taking that hit. Someone must have tagged him just as he was jumping off the roof of the mansion. That would explain why he’d screwed up the landing.

He also determined that he must have been knocked out for quite a while, because both wounds had stopped bleeding on their own. His thigh muscle had tightened up into a rock-hard knot that ached like hell.

The pounding in his head made it hard to think. His training told him that he should be trying to notice details, trying to figure out where he was being taken.

You’re going up. The road is bumpy. Lots of turns.

He remembered the e-mail he’d sent to Mark and Daria. He’d only managed to attach three photos to it. There hadn’t been time for more.

Decker briefly thought of Daria with a sense of longing, then stopped himself.

He thought again of the e-mail he’d sent. If he’d been on the receiving end of it, he’d have sent it right to the trash with the rest of his spam. After all, he’d sent it from an address neither Mark nor Daria would recognize. But Mark had been one of the CIA’s best spies and Daria was no slouch either. They were trained to notice things that most people didn’t.

But even if they looked at the photos, what then?

Mark will use people, like he once used you. He knows how to leverage his power. God knows, he can be a mean son of a bitch when he needs to be.

Decker closed his eyes.

But even if Mark makes sense of the photos, you’ll still be screwed.

Decker had sent Mark and Daria those photos so that the evidence he’d collected wouldn’t be lost forever. Not to save his own ass. He’d gotten himself into this mess, and it was up to him to get himself out. He had no overwatch looking out for him, no tracker telling backup where he was.

The car was climbing a moderate incline, straining the engine.

Decker thought back to Hell Week at Coronado, when he’d trained to be a SEAL. He’d punished his body beyond what
he thought was possible, swimming for hours in freezing salt water, staying awake for the better part of five days…He’d cracked four ribs falling off an obstacle course, but he’d kept going because the only thing worse than soldiering on was the thought of quitting. One hundred and three guys in kick-ass shape had started off in his BUDS class that week, but only twenty-two had made it to the end. And of those twenty-two, only fifteen had made it through the rest of the training to become full-fledged SEALs.

Even after getting tossed from the teams—he’d disobeyed a direct order, a bullshit order that he was pretty sure had been issued because he’d screwed his squad leader’s wife without knowing who she was—he’d always been proud that he’d been part of that group of fifteen, had worn it like a badge of honor.

His thoughts turned back to the present, and what would happen next. His captors would question him, which was probably the only reason he was still alive.

Probe for weakness. Remember your training.

Code of Conduct. Article III. If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape…

Decker ran his hands inch by inch over the entire interior of the trunk, searching for, but not finding, a cable that might release the lock. He did, however, locate the back sides of the rear seats. On one of them, he felt the imprint of a body. The springs on that seat squeaked whenever the car went over a bump. That squeak, combined with the loud banging of the rear shocks, wasn’t doing anything to help his splitting headache.

Be patient. But don’t wait for the perfect moment to make your move because the perfect moment may never come.

Decker adjusted his six-foot-four frame so that one shoulder was lightly touching the back side of the occupied rear seat and his feet were planted on the opposite wall of the trunk. The pain in his wounded thigh was searing. His neck was crimped and he wished he were a foot shorter.

His first explosive push blasted the seat forward a foot. On his second push, Decker threw the rear passenger halfway into the front seat.

The car swerved, and the driver and everyone else in the car started shouting at each other. Decker kept ramming forward until he’d flattened the rear seat. Then he pistoned his shoulder into the small of a skinny man’s back. The car skidded to a stop. Decker lunged for the skinny man’s neck and twisted until he heard a crack.

It was bright outside, possibly early morning. Through the windshield Decker caught a glimpse of craggy, barren hills and a roadside bakery where flatbread was stacked high in baskets out front.

A big man in the front passenger seat rolled out of the car. The driver was in a panic, trying to unlock the safety on his gun. Decker pulled himself completely out of the trunk and into the backseat of the car, then lunged for the throat of the man with the gun.

Someone grabbed his legs from the back of the trunk just as a bearded guy yanked open the car’s rear doors and started smashing Decker’s face with the butt of an AK-47. Decker felt a second set of hands on his legs—this time, right on his bullet wound.

A young guy in a white shirt ran out of the bakery and into the road, yelling something that Decker couldn’t understand. The guy with the AK-47 fired a few shots in the air and the man in the white shirt stopped short.

Decker was dragged out of the car. Once on the ground, four men who’d evidently been traveling close behind in a backup car began to kick him. He grabbed hold of the leg of the tallest of his assailants, threaded an arm around the man’s knee, twisted until he heard a snap, used his thumb to gouge the man’s eye as he fell, and then crushed the man’s esophagus with a fist to the throat. Someone kicked road gravel into Decker’s face, temporarily blinding him, but he grabbed another assailant’s leg and threw a fist up into the guy’s balls.

Decker heard one of his own ribs snap and felt a kick to his head. The last thing he heard before experiencing the strange sensation that his head was being knocked off his neck was a swish of something—a rifle butt?—traveling fast through the air.

Almaty, Kazakhstan

D
ARIA
B
UCKINGHAM SAT
down on a bench in a little park near her apartment, took a sip of the coffee she’d just bought, and closed her eyes. It was only two in the afternoon, but she was tired. In just over three hours, she needed to show up for her third day at her new job—concierge at the plush InterContinental Hotel in downtown Almaty. These side trips outside the city were taking their toll on her. Physically and emotionally.

She tried to block the image of the slum from her mind and allowed herself to rest for a moment, enjoying the feel of the spring sun on her face. The oak trees in the park had just leafed out. In the distance, the rugged mountains of the Tian Shan poked through the white clouds that hugged their steep sides. A flower vendor sat nearby, beneath a rainbow-colored sun umbrella, and little kids swung back and forth on an orange-and-green-painted swing set.

Almaty was a beautiful city, she thought, telling herself she should notice that beauty more often than she did. In the years since the fall of the Soviet Union, it had gone from a dismal backwater dump to a wealthy center of commerce.

On a bench adjacent to her own, an old woman with dirty swollen fingers was tossing bread crumbs to pigeons. She wore old army boots, some soldier’s castoffs that she’d laced up with rough twine.

That made Daria think of the slums again.

The meeting with the director had gone well. She hadn’t made any promises, but she had seen the hope in his eyes when she’d asked what—if money
was
available—would be most useful to him. Even with the trace of scarring on her face, she knew she looked like someone who had lived a privileged life, someone who might actually be able to deliver such funds. Her teeth were white and straight. She dressed well, and she knew how to carry herself like a rich foreigner when she found it advantageous to be perceived that way.

Daria thought about the meeting for a moment longer, jotted down a few notes to herself on her phone, and then checked her e-mail.

The new message had a blank subject line.

She didn’t recognize the sender’s address—[email protected]—and was about to delete it, thinking it was spam. But the .tm domain indicated that the e-mail had come from a server in Turkmenistan, which struck her as odd.

Turkmenistan was one of the most insular and technologically backward countries in the world. All Internet traffic was closely monitored, so the country generated far less spam than some of the other former Soviet republics in Central Asia. Daria knew the country fairly well. Until just three weeks ago, she’d been working there.

The e-mail came with three attachments.

Another reason not to open it, thought Daria. An e-mail from an unknown sender, from a backwater country, with attachments that were probably viruses.

On the other hand, most viruses out there weren’t designed to hit smartphones. And she did know someone who was probably in Turkmenistan right now. This wasn’t his e-mail address, but…

Daria opened the e-mail. There was nothing in the text box. Which left the attachments, all JPEG photo files.

She looked around to see if anyone was behind her, anticipating that porn ads would pop up when she clicked on them.
The first photo was of two men—one tall with Asian features, the other olive skinned and wearing a black turban—exchanging a briefcase; the second was of a three-story brick mansion with a tile roof, high balconies, and a large portico; and the third was a strange blurry nighttime photo that Daria had trouble deciphering at first.

She stared at the last photo for a long time, trying to make sense of it.

The center was dominated by a vertical swath of white. But it was the blurry form on the edge of the photo that really captured her attention. A hand and muscular arm were held high in the air. A single finger extended up from the hand. Affixed to the wrist was a bulky black watch trimmed in blue.

She enlarged the photo, focusing on the watch. The lousy quality of the photo made it impossible for Daria to be sure, but she could have sworn the watch was a Timex Ironman. And that the same arm, wearing that same watch, had been around her shoulders just a few weeks ago.

Decker
, she thought.

Daria stared at her phone. The faceplate of the watch glowed green, as if the nightlight button had just been pushed—maybe with the hope that the day and time would be visible? It wasn’t.

John Decker was a former Navy SEAL, a freak of nature when it came to physical ability—one of those guys who Daria was sure, by the age of ten, had been able to run faster, climb higher, and lift more weight than 90 percent of guys twice his age—and an unlikely friend. Until two weeks ago, she and Deck had been working for the same private intelligence contractor in Turkmenistan. Decker had gotten her the job, pulling her away from a lousy situation back in the States. She’d been grateful that he’d thought of her.

You’re weirding me out, Deck.

Daria hit Reply and sent [email protected] a message:
wtf?

She tried calling Decker’s cell phone. No one answered. When she tried to leave a message, an automated voice told her
Decker’s voice mail account was full. Which was also odd, she thought. You’d have to have an awful lot of unopened or saved voice mail messages to fill up an account.

Or maybe someone had just butt dialed Decker and left an hour-long message by mistake. That could fill up a mailbox. Or maybe Decker had just butt dialed himself.
That
she could see happening.

She sent him a text message—
Hey John, what can you tell me about 3 photos from Alty8?

Then she called the Hotel President in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, where, last she knew, Decker had been staying.